from the morgue

Urban Driftwood

My first evar poetry publication? Yes it is, and more.

Urban Driftwood is a collection of writing (poetry and prose) by some young Wellington-based Kiwis. It's about the journey from being young to being less young in a city where the wind always blows. I'm one of the four writers, which should tip you off that this has been in the works for a long time: nine years, in fact, since Dan (of Freshly Ground) decided he was going to assemble it.

So this is writing from a decade ago. Best guess is that I was 18 when I wrote the earliest piece and 22 when I wrote the latest one. When Dan was finally bringing UD into being earlier this year, I bravely resisted the temptation to revise or censor anything, so it is an authentic snapshot of me and my voice a decade back from now. There is still much to like - in fact, I think my favourite piece of mine was the aforementioned earliest one, a short prose piece called "Tyrage" that made its debut on the Victoria University electronic bulletin board system when I was a wee first-year.

The collection is a nice blend of voices, which was always Dan's intent - he, Jane and Stephen all bring distinctive rhythms and styles and they balance each other well. Jane's meditative simplicity, Stephen's shaggy-dog shrugs of tone, Dan's thoughtful density and my whatever. I am pleased to say that it lives up to Dan's initial hope that we four writers together would be more than the sum of our parts.

So I commend to you, Urban Driftwood. Well done, Dan, on getting it done!

Urban Driftwood is available on Lulu, the lovely net-based print-on-demand service. For US$10 (plus freight) a copy will be printed and bound and dispatched to your door.

Joy of Passwords

Specifically, the joy of devising a new password that meets minimum safety requirements (6 characters, mix of letters and numbers, doesn't contain any dictionary words) that I know I will always remember.

I have a pool of about 15 passwords in my head - I mostly remember which ones go with which applications, and if i don't I usually get it on the second or third try. All of these passwords have been with me for about a decade and a half (hey, that's about one a year!), moving from place to place and institution to institution. When I have to change a password, I swap it for another of my golden fifteen. There's a lot of double ups - I think I have about forty or so logins in different places around workplaces and the internet.

Many of my 15 passwords are acronyms. Take the first letter of each word in a saying, song lyric or movie quote, and you're underway. Mix it up a bit - some letters you can replace with numbers because they look similar or the words they reference are actually numbers. Mix case up and down if your password is case-sensitive; put the emphasis words in capitals. Easy as pie to remember, and very much uncrackable. (e.g. a password devised from that song from Grease "You're the one that I want" => "Yt1tiW")

And now, using a variation of the above scheme, I have come up with a new password. It delights me because it is so simple and so memorable yet still quite safe. It is a strange thing to take pleasure in, but there you go. I'll probably still be using this new password in another fifteen years.

So. Got passwords? How do you manage to remember yours? Do you discard old passwords forever or keep them around in your head to use in other places?

morgueatlarge: UK

For those not subscribed to my travel email list, morgue at large, here are links to posts about my recent two-week trip to the UK:

London: "..wandering towards the west end from Liverpool Street station on my first morning back - here I'm in a Bangladeshi street market, now I'm surrounded by families come to London to photograph the sights, now around the corner I'm in the square mile with pin-striped twenty-somethings discarding cigarettes, now edging back out of the City and I'm surrounded by white van men scoffing bacon butties and reading the Daily Sport..."

Winchester for the wedding: "It's a beautiful town, with ancient buildings, King Arthur's Round Table (built in the 13th century or so), Jane Austen's house, and a meadow walk that inspired Keats ode "To Autumn" - but how could any of those attractions possibly compare to the sheer joy to be had at that wedding?"

Edinburgh: "I admit it - when the train came rolling into Edinburgh and I looked up and saw the Salisbury Crags and Calton Hill and the Jacob's Ladder stair - my heart was beating faster"

[morgueatlarge is where my travel stories go. You can scan the full archives here - they cover Europe, North America, the Middle East, and a few other points of interest. Subscribe with a blank email to morgueatlarge-subscribe@topica.com if you are so inclined...]

Sleeping In, reversed

I've been going to bed at 10.30 for over a week now, in a drastic change from my traditional bedtime of 12.30-1am. Initially it was because 40+ hours of travelling caught up on me, but now it is dangerously close to becoming a habit. Going to bed early is nice.

How on earth am I going to complete this Masters if I'm going to bed at 10.30? *panics*

I Liked Them Before You Did

From a November 2003 email about 8 August of that year:
"On Friday Cal and I were wandering near the Student Union building, Teviot, and were offered free tickets to a show by Irish comedian David O'Doherty. Despite our worrying [earlier] experiences with the alleged Cream of Irish Comedy we signed on, and got an interesting show - mostly consisting of O'Doherty sitting with a keyboard on his lap playing and singing amusing ditties about
how miserable and crap he was. Not bad at all, actually, and at that price how can you go wrong?"

From a Guardian report four days ago:
"David O'Doherty has taken home the main prize at the if.comedy awards - formerly known as the Perriers - in Edinburgh, the most prestigious accolade of its kind."

----

From my blog, March 9, 2004:
"I discovered today that my NZ-rock-gods-to-be Two Lane Blacktop have split up. Sucksville."

From the Guardian on June 9:
"We're going to stick our necks out on this one and predict that Ladyhawke are going to be massive. Or rather, "is" going to be massive: Ladyhawke (the title of a 1985 fantasy film starring Sarah Jessica Parker's hubby; not to be confused with Ladyhawk, a Canadian indie-rock band) is the vehicle for the giant (alter) ego that is the New Zealand-born Pip Brown [formerly of Two Lane Blacktop]."

(The first and only time I saw them play was at Indigo during the Cuba Street Carnival in Feb 2002 - Our Sophie was on the door and I popped up to see her, and stuck around to watch because the band was amazing. Sophie chatted with me about Pip afterwards; we were both well impressed. Hmm, a quick google reveals the Ladyhawke Lady herself announcing that gig on NZMusic - so it was on Feb 22.)

----

Anyway, this clearly shows that my taste in everything is chronologically superior to your taste in everything. Sorry about that.

Trains, Planes, Automobiles

Train from Edinburgh to London Kings Cross
Tube on Circle line to Paddington station
Train from Paddington to Heathrow
Plane from Heathrow to Hong Kong
Plane from Hong Kong to Sydney
Plane from Sydney to Wellington
Automobile from Wellington to Lower Hutt
Much-needed shower
Automobile from Lower Hutt to Wellington
Much-needed sleep.

Now back to work!

About To Return

It is Monday morning in Edinburgh. The last two weeks have been packed with stuff. I am on a bit of a bliss rush from seeing so many wonderful people in such a short period of time. But real life is clawing me back and in a couple hours I get on the train to London, then the plane to Hong Kong, then to Sydney, then to Wellington.

This is my second time leaving Edinburgh. I'll be back to do it again.

Where I Was On Saturday

In Winchester, with groom Leon and best man Ado, waiting for the bride.

Leon on the right, me in the middle, Ado on the left.

Flying Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning I'm on the plane to the UK for two glorious weeks of London, Winchester and Edinburgh, including the reason for the journey: the wedding of The Most Revered And Regal Leon, King And God, to the wonderful Laura.

I'll be back in a few weeks. Blogging will be low. Anyone in London who doesn't already know about the Weds post-work picnic catchup, give me an email. Plans in Edinburgh are still disorganized.

And following the discussion and extensive advice I received here, just now I finally got off my backside and carbon offset my flight at CarbonZero.com. Total carbon emissions 7867.54kg CO2-e; offset cost $270. Worth every cent. They even gave me a certificate to prove it.

Next task is to pay back the good soul who loaned me money for the tickets...

Oh dear.

I just became one of those people who withdraw money at the ATM and then walk away without the money.

Its all downhill from here, folks.

Grah, computer!

[this cry for help also appears on LJ]

Help! Computer people!

I woke up yesterday and my laptop was unable to make use of the internet. I figured this was some passing issue at the service end and didn't stress too much, but here I am 24 hours later and the problem continues.

Caroline's laptop is doing just fine on the same wireless connection - I'm typing this on her machine, which is sitting right next to mine which stubbornly does nothing.

I just can't figure it out. My machine says it is connected, and all the checks and diagnostics I know how to run say everything is working fine, but it just isn't *doing* anything. There's no packets coming in. It can't connect to a website, it can't ftp, it can't make any sort of connection to the world outside.

I won't have a chance to call any Support people until tomorrow at the earliest, so in the meantime I ask of you, my computer-wise blog-reading friends - WTF? What has happened, and what can I do?

Grah!

History of an ORC

ORC, the roleplaying club I started in Edinburgh in 2003, had its fifth anniversary this weekend gone. I allowed myself a moment of pride for kicking the whole thing off, then felt even better that so many wonderful people had picked up what I'd done and taken it even further.

Over on Gametime, the NZ groupblog of roleplaying discussion, I've been talking about the process of getting ORC going in the first place. It was quite an important time of my life, putting into practice something I'd only talked about before. Its something that is still important to me, and I'm sure it isn't the last time I do something like this.

One thing I don't talk about in those posts is the commitment involved, though. It was a big deal - for the first year, nearly every Saturday afternoon I'd be down at ORC teaching people how to roll a d20. Even after the first year I still attended far, far more than I missed. While other Kiwis on their OE took weekend trips to Europe, my weekend trips were to the Fantastic Realm (a.k.a. the Caffe Nero on Rose Street). Bless Cal for putting up with me!

Anyway, if you want to read about my experience starting a club from scratch, the first part is here, and the second part is here, and the third part isn't written yet.

First Assignment Complete

So that thing GMail does where it autocompletes the email addresses? Handy, except when it tricks you into emailing an assignment to the wrong person.

But imagine my surprise when the wrong person replied, attaching an assignment that was completed by their 6-month old son...

See how Dom did here

And we're off!

The 2nd year Social Psyc class I'm TA for just had its first lecture.

My intention is to try not to get thrown off the racehorse. Staying on track = bonus.

New Job Rumpus

Just signed contract for my new job. I'm now the manager of the Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research at Victoria University, very conveniently located in the same department where I'm doing my Masters.

So the freelance gigs and casual stuff are now thoroughly on the backburner. I start Monday. It's only part-time of course but, yeah. New job! Neato.

I shall be celebrating on Saturday night at Rumpus 08: Rumpus vs Episode. You should come too, if you are in Wellington this weekend. The Rumpletron lives again!

(Have I ever admitted that the name Rumpus comes, not from Where The Wild Things Are, but from Miller's Crossing?)

On My Knees

Last few blog entries, and this one, composed in a few minutes and hastily posted. This is, safe to say, not my blogging golden age. Thank heaven for the friday linky that keeps you all coming back, I suppose...

Doco season chez morgue + cal has continued. Watched Rats in the Ranks a few weeks back, splendid nailbiter about a local body election in Oz. And Jesus Camp the other night, great wee film, Cal and I talked most of the way through it which is usually the sign of a good doco for us. Much I could blog about it but I won't just now. Anyone out there seen either of these gems?

Sad that George Carlin died.

I am currently in the habit of kneeling, instead of sitting, while working at my computer desk.
(It occurs to me that I studied for exams in high school standing up.)
Make of this what you will.

Ron the Wordle

The first part of Ron the Body, wordle-ized.

(RtB is off being looked at by agent/publisher folk, if anyone was wondering.)

Return of the Rumpletron!

Rumpus '08 is here! Rumpus vs. Episode: Rhythmic Emergency

The "party of the year" is eager to fight for its title against some other damn good parties of 2008. This time, the Rumpletron is going head-to-head with another legendary party series, Episode!

Sat 5th July, 1a Kensington Ave Petone (new venue). Be there and be medical!

Track progress with Rumpmeister d3vo
Read about Rumpus 07
Read about Rumpus 06

Step Forward, Steps Back

Sometimes study is like this: you spend all day trying to get through your articles-to-read folder, and when you finish you're glad that there's only 10% more articles in there than when you began.

(Because the thing about reading journal articles is they reference other articles and you realise you have to read those too. And so on.)

Stronger Birthday

Yesterday (Sunday) was my beloved Strong-Light's birthday.

She is a busy bee in the Beehive at present, so her blog is updated only infrequently, but it would still be nice for those who know her to pop over and give her some birthday love.

The Busy

Have had the busy well and truly this past week. Apart from the usual nonsense of study study and worky worky, I've had a major meeting that I had to prep for, two classes of papers to mark, a freelance assignment due, an ethics application to complete and submit, a 6-month report to write and get reviewed and signed, a playtest game to prep, run, and report on, another meeting to prep for, a friend's housemove to assist, and a job interview.

I sat down on the afternoon of 22 May (last Thurs) to write all of those deadlines in a list, then carefully figured out how I could possibly get them all done. I must have done my sums right because it's a week later and everything got done and I also returned a mystery postcard to its owner, watched the last episodes of The Wire, and joined in a trashy film fest with the Knifeman.

Was not perfect. I missed a birthday party I really wanted to go to, turned up to some farewell drinks but was confused enough not to find the farewell-ee despite apparently walking right past their table a couple of times, and did not reply to a letter from overseas that really deserves a swift response. Plus, didn't get all the study done I wanted to.

Still. I'm glad I'm in this Wednesday instead of last Wednesday. Last Wednesday was kind of intimidating.

Post-48

The 48 Hour Film Comp weekend is now done. Jenni's Angels had an intense weekend, and got its final cut into the judges with all of four seconds to spare (!). I was in the writing team this year, and my intentions to get up to help with the shoot came to nothing - other errands and tasks took up much of Saturday, and Sunday I just wiped.

This year's requirements were the character Kerry Post, a perfectionist; the line "Wait a minute"; and the required prop was a brush. Our team had as genre "Superhero" or "Fairy Tale" - we were able to choose. Up at Indigo City we got into some serious brainstorming with almost the whole crew there, pushing through some truly great ideas, but we sifted through to cut ideas that were too big for a six-minute flick, and some that just seemed too technically demanding to be worth risking. Oddly enough, we settled on an idea generated at the start of Jenni's Angel's very first 48, passed over on that occasion. We found just the right riff for it this time out.

The writing team then shifted to different premises to work up a script. The team was much the same as the last time I was on it: me, hix and Sean again, joined this time by Chris G. It was an awesome team, each of us bringing different perspectives and strengths to the mix, and best of all we had the collaborative thing going real well. There was no ego in the room as we worked through ideas, shot down bits that didn't click, elaborated on bits that ran hot, and generally made our way through to a script that made us happy.

By this time it was 5.30am, so we emailed out the script, then hix and I drove around for a while before turning up at Indigo City for the 6.30am actor call. Straight away there was feedback coming from people who had read the script before coming up; we started making a few scribbled changes here and there. As French Toast was put on, furious planning was going on all around us as costumes and props were chased down, filming locations were settled, and technical prep began. Director Lee took me, hix and our four cast into a quiet room and we ran the script. The red pen came out and we chopped and changed the script a bit, and then I decided I was done - Lee and hix and the cast had everything well in hand. I headed away to do the sleeping thing. It was around 8am.

35 hours of intense work followed my departure. I hope the script didn't have any crazy hooks hidden in it that caused mayhem - I don't think it did, but...

Unlike previous years, cast and crew are forbidden to watch the completed entry before its big-screen debut. This is only a couple days away: Jenni's Angels is in Heat 6, on Wednesday 21st May, 9.15pm at The Paramount. I'm hella looking forward.

Thank you to the amazing fellow JAs who made the thing while I was sleeping.

And yay the 48. It is a beautiful thing.

Party Warning: June 14

Notification: flatwarmer-ing party on June 14.

To celebrate it being thirteen months since we moved in! Or something.

Details to come.

Ron: Done

And with that, I've finished draft 3 of Ron the Body.

Good. It doesn't feel any different to knocking off any other bit of work - I know from experience it takes a while to sink in, and there's still a bunch of reformatting, spellchecking, etc to do before I can truly put it in the finished file. Not to mention a bit of punching up the synopsis and cover letter when I get pitching the damn thing again.

I slipped about a month over deadline on this. Not too bad, in the grand scheme of things.

Best of all, it feels like Ron is done this time. Sure, I could go back and do another draft - it isn't perfect. Nothing ever gets to perfect. But what I have now is a draft I'm happy with and proud of and, most importantly, that I think is publishable. Just got to find the right publisher, namely one who thinks the same.

So, yes, it's good. I've had versions of this moment twice before - finishing draft one in '06, and finishing draft two in '07. Both those times I knew there was more work to do. Right now, looking at those final words? I'm done.

I love the final words of Ron. I remember exactly where I was when they came to me - sitting on a rock formation in Wadi Rum, in Jordan, looking at the sandy desert and the blue sky. They were the perfect words to end the book, and they've stayed unchanged through all three drafts. They're probably my favourite words in the whole thing. It's good to see them again.

---

Other writing-ish things:

1) Unearthly: Cosmic Heroes, an RPG supplement for superhero gaming, has garnered another review in the last month, this time a nice five-star bit. I'm pleased. I don't have much time for the freelance writing at the moment, so it's good to see this is still getting sales and good responses.

2) Oddly enough, I am a featured interviewee in issue 26 of Doctor Who fanzine RTP. I still haven't got around to organising myself a copy, but it is mentioned in the Zeus Blog issue review: "Speaking of intelligent opinion, the Morgan Davie interview..." *blushes*

3) I've picked up another freelance writing contract with local computer games company Sidhe Interactive... last time it was writing spot dialogue for the new movie-based Speed Racer game (I'm finally confirming this now, I figure the NDA won't kick my arse now the game is actually on release in the US!), this time it's another project that I also can't talk about, but promises to muchas super fun.

4) The 48 Hour Film Fest is here again, and this Friday I'm saddling up the ol' laptop and rocking along to join the elite writing team of doom. This time we're gonna break the 48 entirely. It's gonna rock. I direct your attention to the team's 2006 entry, Monster Hunter Iv: Beyond Repair (cowritten by me and with me in a prominent acting role as well):

And the even-better 2007 entry, Destination Earth, in which I held a flecky board and carried things around the set because that's hella important too:

Enough of this madness. Now to do the sleeping thing.

Monday Morning Aww

Me an' my godson Isaac.

(This photo kindly sponsored by Epicurean Empire Ice Cream.)

Moose Stomp

Moose don't need antlers to stomp y'all.

I've been pushing hard these last couple days, and blogging has fallen right off the wagon. Maybe get some good linky tomorrow, we'll see how that go. Up side = writing the last couple weeks has been hard, grinding, sore, thankless work, but writing the last couple nights has seen everything fall into place beautifully. Ah yes, that's a good feeling.

(Image is another from the outstanding photoblog riotclitshave.)

Good Weekend

If a busy and rather non-productive one. I read poetry (Mr Scott Kendrick's much-loved Wellington poem Lambton Shuffle ) at Hottieperm's talentquestparty, kicked a football around a schoolyard without breaking myself, made some very nice soup and fed it to people, watched the end of The Wire season 4, talked Mexico with people going to Mexico, did some work on Ron, slept in real good, and had a very nice time overall.

And right now I'm waiting for the one-hour-before-food direction for my short antibiotic course to elapse so I can have some breakfast and go to school. Another late start. Ach.

Anyway. Here's a taster of the art for the first issue in comic story The Beast, written by me and with art by Brynn. (Previously mentioned waaaay back in Feb '06, here.) Learning how to do comics collaboratively - there is much for us both to get our heads around. Anyway, enjoy.

Youthful Apprehensions, Cont.

Not amongst the bon mots common to our merry band of youthful chums, but nonetheless known to us from the chatter of older types, was the phrase, "pipe dream", in such usage as this example: "don't endear yourself to the splendid plans you've heard for the new playing area; these plans, I'm afraid, are something of a pipe dream".

Naturally I presumed that there was a metaphorical pipe, through which one's projects must progress before achieving completion. By reference to this metaphorical pipe, and invoking the word 'dream' one could create the suggestion that something much desired would, in fact, not exist at all, but be something merely wished or "dreamed" to be in the pipe - and of course, wishing is not sufficient to award existence, and by this same rule, a "pipe dream" would be a project that would never come to fruition. Properly, it belongs in the same general category as the (perhaps apocryphal) hallucinatory oasis.

This interpretation of course gained much greater credence when our school studies of philosophy led to long discussions of Cartesian dualism, and the trenchant response of Gilbert Ryles and his derisive coinage, "the ghost in the machine"; indeed many happy hours were spent lingering after school caught up in vigorous argument, taking up one position or another in this engaging problem.

And to this day, while long since disabused of my youthful misconception, I retain a certain fondness for my interpretation; for I'm sure you'll agree, all projects and assignments do progress in a fashion akin to matter along a pipe; and all that matters is the type of pipe it may be!

Ah, the naivete of youth!

morgue's usability seminar #12

When designing things that beep occasionally when they're running low on batteries, don't.

Because wandering fruitlessly around the house at 2am searching for the source of the beep that's keeping you awake is an example of not good usability.

Next week: how not to label remote control buttons

Surround Sound

I bought my stereo in... 1997? Something like that. Disregarding d3vo's advice to invest in a multiple component system, I bought a Sony GR10-AV. It came with surround sound capability - two rear speakers and a centre speaker for dialogue.

After more than a decade, I have finally set up the surround sound. Verdict: neat.

(Note: I couldn't make it work. Cal made it work. Respect where it's due.)

Now if only I can figure out where the remote for it is...

More Amazing Things About Me

And while I'm on the subject of me:

* a few minutes ago I finished the first bout of marking for the first-year tutoring I'm doing. I do enjoy marking, except for the fact that it takes almost forever to do it well.

* finger is back in a splint. This time it was custom made for me (Splints While-U-Wait!) so should do a much better job of sorting out this finger. The hand therapist took some measurements - it's the first joint on my left ring finger, and I can't bend it down further than about 60 degrees or bring it up any straighter than about 30 degrees. I probably won't ever get the full 0-90 range of movement back but she was optimistic about getting pretty close. Sounds good to me.

* LJ readers will already know this, but for those in the UK who don't read there: I'm coming over your way to attend the wedding of Leon, King, God and one of my oldest friends, to his Lady God. I'll be in London the week of the 11th August, and in Edinburgh the week of the 18th August, except for the days when I'm in Winchester or wherever the heck else.

* I really should go to sleep now.

More Youthful Misapprehensions

As a wee chap, it was commonplace in our schoolyard for one lad to deride another's claim or opinion with the phrase, "Get off the grass!"

Naturally I presumed that there was a metaphorical lawn, upon which one's pronouncements were apt to be exaggerated if not outright falsehoods, or in the case of statements of opinion, extreme and poorly considered.

By reference to this metaphorical lawn, and exhorting the speaker to depart from it, one could indicate one's poor opinion of the veracity of the speaker's claims, or of the value of their opinion.

Rather a useful piece of garden topiary, I'm sure you'll agree!

Ah, the naivete of youth!

Farewells and Welcomes

Malcolm departed today. He is off to the land of Oz, and then further afield still on his road back to Edinburgh. Farvell, as the viking says on the sign by the little town of Norsewood.

And some new arrivals deserving of welcome - baby boys to Chuck (of Sidonia) and Sally, and to Gino (of Death From Above) and Viv. If I have my timing right, both of them have a birthday of April 2, which is in my eyes a most auspicious date.

The birthday wisdom is accumulating in the comments to the previous post. They fill me with such glee. Politics, Yeats, Bon Jovi, BrainDead, the Wire, even a shocking true tale of the emergency room told in two quotes. Check them out - and if you haven't already, add one for me!

Birthday Wisdom 2K8

I turn 32 around midday today, in about a dozen hours. What kind of age is that, 32? It seems a meaningless age to be. (I sincerely hope it is.)

As is traditional here at From the Morgue, I ask my readers to add a quotation of some kind to the comments as a birthday gift.

It can be a quote from a song or a poem or a movie or a conversation or an advertising brochure or a blog or a speech or a legal opinion or a sports commentary or a magazine article or a comic book or a novel or a motivational poster or the website you have open on the other browser tab. Give me a quote that means something to you, or a quote that means nothing to you, or a quote that couldn't mean anything to anybody even if they tried.

Every year, this collection of random bits of the world makes me happy, and I like to be happy on my birthday. C'mon and indulge me.

Previous Birthday Wisdoms: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

Malty Birthday

Wellingtonians:

Wednesday is my birthday. Yet again. Someone oughta do something about how quickly those things roll around. Since finger-injury is still ruling out the netball basketball fun, I'm gonna be at Malty Media instead. Malty Media is this:

It's the first Wednesday of the month, time again for another free mid-week chill out session... Your hosts Jet Jaguar & Aquaboogie mix up their own compositions & improv jams with bonkers selections from 50s pop through contemporary classical to 80s soundtrack themes. Oh, and mangled field recordings.

So come to Malty Media and say hi. It's free, at Katipo Cafe on Willis St, from 7-9pm, Wednesday April 2nd.

(Weds is also Malcolm's last night in NZ. If you missed the gathering on Saturday then pop along to this.)

Rejected!

Received my first rejection slip for Ron the Body the other day.

(Some of you might have pieced together I'm still writing the third draft. How can I get rejected when it ain't done? Simply because I fired off a pitch to an agent when I hid the quarter-mark; you only need the first few chapters and a synopsis. I figured, correctly, it would motivate me to get the rest of draft 3 written but fast.)

It's not the first rejection notice I've received - I've been shopping around in move and Fell Legacy for a while, with no success. But both of those books are tough sells - a publisher has every right to second guess whether they could bring them to market. They're both pitched a bit askew from easy genre fit. (in move sits somewhere between contemporary, popular and young adult lit; Fell Legacy is a fantasy novel treated as horror movie/character study.) Plus, they're far from perfect works of fiction - I'm still finding a voice in in move and in Fell Legacy I never really mastered the prose style I tried. So rejections for those have been easy to understand. Heck, sometimes I've received actual responses rather than form rejections, which have been invariably positive in the process of saying no.

It is, however, the first time I've tried to get interest for Ron the Body, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about getting a no. The reasons for my sanguine response to previous rejections don't really apply here. Ron fits clearly into the subgenre of contemporary lit that uses a fantastical element to explore its ideas (c.f. The Time-Traveller's Wife and The Fortress of Solitude). And my craft has improved out of sight. Ron is good to go. More than anything else I've produced, it could hold its own on a bookstore's shelves.

But you know what? I'm actually surprisingly cool with getting bounced back. (If I wasn't, I wouldn't be blogging this, for one thing.) The old thing about needing to rack up a whole bunch of rejections seems to have been taken to heart somewhere along the line. I don't bear any ire towards the agency that said no, and I don't feel discouraged about the potential of the book. There's any number of reasons they could have said no, including that they thought it was terrible, and I'm cool with all of them. It's all part of the game, right?

So, then. This post marks the beginning of the rest. Onwards.

Bother^2

The splint didn't work.

I await fracture clinic, part 2.

How I Spent My New Years

Over at d3vo you can see the 3-minute video taken at the New Years bach, where everyone says what their best moment of 2007 was.

Mostly of note for those who were there. You know who you are.

Streaming Video

I hate sites that deliver video content by streaming it. As soon as I see the word "buffering", I close the browser window and do something else.

Streaming is straight-up bad technology. Let us download the files, already.

(I have always thought this, but post about it today because I discovered Cory agrees with me.)

Zine Launch

Wednesday 19 March, there will be a launching of a zine I contributed to, the rather wonderful Seven Copies Of The Scream. It's going to be in the Welsh Dragon bar from 6pm to 8pm - do come along.

7CotS is a pretty wild joint venture. I'd honestly given up on it ever seeing the light of day, but apparently it's now all go again. Here's the blurb from the website:

All right so the new issue of 7COTS (that stands for SEVEN COPIES OF THE SCREAM) is ready and waiting we just need to get off our ass and get it out there so the punters (which is YOU) can read it

it is an absolute killer of an issue, 70 pages or so of P-smoking brilliance that will have you weeping in your cornflakes and inhaling rice bubbles by snorting with laughter at the wrong time

Featured articles include:
* are we all going crazy (investigative report)
* why vampires really do suck so bad
* music that is cool
* f***d up books
* the best movie review you will ever read (better than the movie and cheaper than paying $16 for a movie ticket CHRIST that is a lot of money who can afford that)
* and THE TEN GROSSEST MOVIE MOMENTS EVER (all of these are on DVD so you can get them from Aro Video)

Also lots of other random awesome.

SO make sure you don't miss the latest issue of 7COTS because it's probably going to be our last and its definitely the best one so far, available at places that carry zines, [this is blatantly not true, it isn't available anywhere - morgue]

you can't miss it because Isabella Rosellini is being nuzzled by a pig on the cover

It's true, the cover does show Isabella Rosellini (sp?) being nuzzled by a pig.

There Will Be Vows

All and sundry, mark your calendars!

Morgue + Cal make it legal
24 Jan 2009
Wellington

All are welcome! We'll figure out how to manage everyone somehow or other.

In Community

Yesterday, while I missed the Wellington Bloggers gathering, I did manage to spend a couple hours with the other moose. It was really good to spend some time catching up. There have been some pretty major developments in both our lives since we last had a catch up worthy of the name - him more than me, which is saying something.

One thing we talked about was community, and I realised that I'm finding the community scene in Wellington to be different for me now than it was back in '02, when I hopped a plane to the UK. Then I felt plugged in to a solid and powerful network of people and there was some cool stuff emerging out of the collective. Now... not so much. Still all the awesome people there were then, but the way the connections work has changed.

There are communities here now - but I'm choosing to float on the edges of them, even the ones comprised of many people I am glad to call friends. The communities that I was massively invested in before have either disintegrated or ceased to call to me in any powerful way. My social relationships are defined primarily as one-to-one things instead of by membership in many-to-many nets.

Partly this is the shift in my cohort to babies and suburbs. But only partly; there's something else going on. Not sure what. Perhaps there was a direction, or a counter-direction, that we once had and that is now lacking?

And underlying all of this, of course, is the fact that I am ridiculously busy right now. Pushing hard to get RtB tightened up, at the same time as pushing work to get $$ under control, at the same time as pushing study to get MSc on point... My former data point has been the number of emails I have building up unreplied-to. That stack has got ridiculous now. New data point: I am actually relieved that my finger is busted taking me out of sport for two months, because it means I get a few more hours in the day.

Strange times. I would benefit from more time to reflect than I'm currently getting. But at least I have my priorities straight enough to blog, right? It's pretty much the only contact I have with most of you after all..

Lessons of the Best Man

So I was Best Man on Friday for Frank. It was awesome. And now I get to share some wisdom about the Best Man speech. I bet you're all excited.

(1) Writing jokes is hard as hell. I spent the entire 4-hour journey up trying to get one joke to work right. Going over and over and over the damn thing in my head. (Finally I told Cal all the alternatives I'd come up with and she pointed out the best one, which was also the one I liked most. It went down well.) Moral: give yourself plenty of time, so you can let your brain mull. Or be naturally funny. Whichever works for you.

(2) You can go on the internet and get your Best Man speech. There are lots of buy-a-speech sites. There are lots of free speeches to watch on YouTube or read on advice sites. This plethora of speeches does not translate into a plethora of gags you can steal, because they all use the same four lines, and they all suck. It's still useful to look at these for structure, inspiration, and confidence that something genuine and personal always beats some crappy speech off the internet.

(3) Your Best Man speech is probably better with fewer jokes than you initially want.

(4) For best results on the night, aim to be precisely half as drunk as the average audience member.

All of the above wisdom is guaranteed 100% true and correct in all circumstances because I'm perfect.

It was a great wedding, and I loved being a Best Man. (But it stressed me out some.)

Valentine's Day

Leaving to go to a wedding. I am Best Manning it. The speech thing? Proving harder than I expected.

I send you all of these e-cards. Thank you internets.

Now I depart. Onward - to Havelock North!

Bother.

Got these, then got this.

6-8 weeks in a splint. Damn.

How New Years Was Spent

(Still a bunch of emails to catch up on. This all takes far too long. But anyway.)

New Years in Wellington is, by tradition, rubbish. The city always goes quiet over the new years period as all the young and party-hearty up sticks for other locales, such as the big dance parties across the channel in Nelson, or something up north.

This year, D3vo and I hatched a cunning plan to ditch dub-town for a place of our own. Through the kind generosity of Ruth (of Not Usually About Penguins), we secured a very nice holiday house on the Kapiti Coast. It's a place that I've been visiting for over a decade, again thanks to Ruth's (and Damon's!) continuing generosity, and it's become quite important to me. The chance to share it with a bunch of good friends was tremendously appealing.

So, in haphazard fashion we put the word out, deliberately not over-planning it in order to ensure good karmic resonance or something. All came together well. We had twenty or so people in the house and in tents, and the reverie was splendid. Fun with the neighbours, midnight fireworks, downhill dune racing and of course lots of dancing were the order of the night, before everyone crashed out on all available surfaces. It was great.

Hence this post - a good New Years deserves commemoration, because they can be hard to come by. It isn't complicated - get some good mates together and commit to one spot, and let the party roll. And yet it's so easy to get distracted or to try too hard to make too much of the night and end up dissatisfied. Hard for us to really know what we want.

New Years doesn't mean anything by itself. It's a good marker, a good reminder. As numbers tick over it reminds us of time passing, and of change. It is a ready-to-wear symbolic engine, and it can give us power if we choose. I have more to write on that. Short version is just two words, describing something else I did on Hokio Beach at this little New Years party: got engaged.

Other accounts of the fun, with photos, can be found in the writings of Hottieperm, Off-Black, HebeHobo and MalcsTravelogue.